My thumb brushes once over her skin.
“You’re doing well,” I murmur.
She exhales softly.
“I don’t feel like I am.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I reply quietly. “You are.”
I don’t give her time to argue it. I don’t need to. Because I can feel it. And that’s enough.
“Come on,” I say after a moment, my hand sliding from her neck to her waist. “We’re leaving.”
Lucian walks just behind us, his presence unobtrusive but absolute. I don’t need to look to know where he is.
We’re halfway down the corridor when a man steps out from one of the side access points.
Not security.
Not staff.
Someone who shouldn’t be here. He clocks her immediately.
“So it’s true then,” he says, his voice carrying just enough edge to make it clear this isn’t curiosity. “You really are just… passing her around like that?”
Lia goes still.
I don’t stop walking. I don’t warn him. I don’t say a word. I just step forward, and hit him.
My fist connects with his jaw hard enough that his head snaps sideways, his body slamming back into the wall before he can even react. The sound of impact cracks through the corridor, sharp and final.
He barely has time to register what happened before I’m on him.
My hand fists in the front of his shirt, dragging him forward off the wall, my other hand closing around his throat, not squeezing, just holding him there, pinned, suspended.
“Say it again,” I tell him quietly.
His eyes are wide now. Panicked.
“I— I didn’t—”
My grip tightens. Not enough to cut off air. Enough to hurt. Enough to make the point.
“You don’t speak about my wife,” I say, my voice low and even, every word placed exactly where I want it. “You don’t think about her. You don’t look at her. You don’t exist in the same space as her unless I allow it.”
His hands come up, grabbing at my wrist.
Pointless.
“Do you understand me?”
He nods frantically.
“Yes...yes!”
I hold him there for a second longer. Long enough for him to feel exactly how close he is to not walking away from this.
Then I let him go.
